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Our Lord and Master 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE 
CLAIMS OF JESUS CHRIST 



BY J 



REV. JESSE BOWMAN YOUNG, D. D. 



CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & PYE 
NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 



c c C <* o S ^ 



THE LiBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 



Two Copies Received 

JAN 28 1903 

Copyright Entry 
ClASS ^ XXc. No. 

CO'PYB, 



a Co? 



COPYRIGHT, 1903, 
JENNINGS & PYK. 



FOREWORD. 



Some of the reasons wh# the Lord Jesus 
is regarded as worthy of the highest honor 
on earth and in heaven are herewith sug- 
gested, with brevity, and from a standpoint 
which needs to be freshly occupied. In mak- 
ing this presentation we hold in abeyance, 
of choice, many of the stock arguments 
which have been in vogue as upholding the 
doctrine of the Divinity of our Lord, and 
we emphasize others which, in view of our 
own age and in connection with the needs 
of the younger generation of inquirers into 
Biblical truth, may wisely be brought into 
bolder relief. It has not been forgotten in 
dealing with this lofty theme that the most 
convincing proofs of the superhuman rela- 
tions and gracious power of Jesus Christ are 
3 



4 Foreword. 

available only to those who love and obey 
him. While this argument from human ex- 
perience is most comforting and satisfying, 
yet in an age of doubt and in a time when 
assaults are being made upon the Master's 
claims from many sides, even the devoutest 
Christian believer may need to be reassured 
by a consideration of some of the facts and 
proofs which will re-enforce, supplement, 
and give new buttresses to, his faith. Some 
of these other proofs are herein restated, 
with the hope and prayer that they may 
glorify and honor the King. 

Jesse Bowman Young. 
Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, Ohio. 



CONTENTS. 



PAG-E 

Foreword, -- 3 

If 1. A Vital Question, - 7 

If 2. Modern Methods Needed, - - - 10 

If 3. God's Unity Fundamental, 13 

It 4. Christ's Matchless Character, - - 16 

IT 5. Supreme Teacher, Perfect Example, - 19 

1T 6. What Did He Claim? - 24 

1. The Eight to Pardon Sin, - - - 24 

2. " I Will Give You Eest " 25 

3. Judge op All Men, - - - - 26 

4. Son op God, 27 

5. Jurisdiction over the Holy Spirit, - 28 
If 7. The Fourth Gospel, - 32 
If 8. Is He to be Worshiped? - - - - 37 
IF 9. The Penitent Malefactor, 41 

5 



6 Contents. 

PAGE 

If 10. Never Disclaimed Worship, - - 45 

If 11. A Seeming Exception, 48 

If 12. Example of Apostolic Church, - - 50 

If 13. New Testament Term " Worship, " - 56 

If 14. The Primitive Christians, - - - 59 

If 15. Early Christian Hymns, 66 

If 16. Witness of Modern Poets, - - - 74 

If 17. Witness of the Prayer-Book, 80 

If 18. The Facts Focused, - 83 

Tf 19. The Testimony of Experience, 85 

If 20. Conclusion, 91 

If 21. Appendix, - 94 

1. The Apostles' Creed, - - - 95 

2. The Nicene Creed, 95 

3. First and Second Articles of Ke- 

ligion, - - - - - 97 



OUR LORD AND MASTER. 



ffl, A Vital Question. 

One question, asked from time to time 
through the centuries, and uppermost in 
theological inquiry to-day, goes to the very 
heart of the Christian faith, "Is Jesus 
Christ Divine?" The relation of this ques- 
tion to other central teachings of the gospel, 
such as atonement, forgiveness, worship, and 
world-wide evangelization; its direct and in- 
evitable bearing upon human belief, experi- 
ence, character, and conduct; and the fore- 
most place which it has occupied in the 
thought and researches and deliberations of 
the Church in every age, indicate the scope 
and significance of the subject thus brought 
to view. If the Christ of the Gospels is in 
7 



8 Ouk Lord and Master. 

any full and proper sense divine, possessing 
jurisdiction over the human race, and en- 
titled not only to our gratitude and love, 
but to our worship, then it would seem to be 
of inestimable importance that we should 
secure a clear apprehension of the facts in 
the case, and act in accord with them; not 
merely in order to cherish an intelligent 
belief, but that we may be able to state 
lucidly and convincingly the reasons on 
which our faith is erected. Even a well in- 
structed child in a Christian household ought 
to be able to give, off-hand, the reasons why 
our Lord is adored, obeyed, and enthroned 
in human hearts as the One who is mighty 
to save. 

The subject thus brought to view, it may 
be frankly acknowledged, is vast and mani- 
fold in its range and relations. The divinity 
of Christ is a theme which has occupied the 
minds and subsidized the pens of the great- 
est theologians of the ages; hundreds of vol- 
umes have been written upon it; every com- 



Our Lord and Master. 9 

plete work on Christian theology has given 
ample space to its consideration; it is recog- 
nized by friend and foe alike as having a 
fundamental relation to the whole system 
of Christianity; belief in it divides off the 
orthodox world from those who may— with- 
out offense and for the lack of a more con- 
venient term — be styled heterodox, who ac- 
cept Jesus as a religious genius, as perhaps 
the greatest of teachers, but who regard him 
as simply and only a man. The vital char- 
acter of the discussion may therefore be 
taken for granted. 

This thesis may be presented and argued 
from many standpoints; in a brief, modern, 
and suggestive presentation of the ease we 
need to single out from the variety of facts 
and arguments which support the doctrine a 
few which by their timeliness, their connec- 
tion with the intellectual temper of our age, 
their simplicity and directness, can not be 
evaded or reasonably denied. Such a state- 
ment, indeed, is required by the widespread 



10 Ouk Lord and Master. 

conviction which is evident in our day that 
to each generation of Christian believers 
there is due a fresh putting of its beliefs, 
set forth in its own language, and couched 
as far as possible in untechnical terms. 
While this principle is particularly true of 
the arguments in support of the evidences 
of Christianity, it has its application also 
to the cardinal doctrines of the Bible, and 
when rightly applied it will often demon- 
strate the fact that objections and difficul- 
ties which appear in our time as affecting 
these doctrines are in large measure relieved, 
and sometimes entirely obviated, by a mod- 
ern statement of the truth in the case. The 
difficulties may be found to inhere, not in 
the substance of the doctrines, but in the 
form in which these elements of theology 
have sometimes been enshrined. 

f 2. Modern Methods Needed. 

We need not take it for granted, in such 
a discussion as this, that the old arguments 



Ouk Lord and Master. 11 

are obsolete. The old phraseology is not 
necessarily untrue; it is simply archaic; in 
its method, spirit, and form it belongs to 
another time. The old-fashioned lines of 
proof in regard, for instance, to this doc- 
trine under discussion, placed great stress 
upon alleged Trinitarian distinctions in the 
Deity to be found in the Old Testament, — 
such as the utterance of the Creator, "Let 
us make man in our image" (Gen. i, 26), 
and the supposed appearances of our Lord 
as the "Angel of the Covenant" to the patri- 
archs and prophets, in anticipation of his 
final incarnation; the types and ceremonies 
of the Jewish law as foreshadowing his com- 
ing; the literal application of scores of 
"proof-texts," taken from various parts of 
the Old Testament, to the life and ministry 
of our Lord; the miracles which he wrought, 
the prophecies which he exemplified, the 
titles which he bore, the Divine attributes 
which he exercised, and the Divine actions 
which he performed. Upon these chiefly, 



12 Our Lord and Master. 

and somewhat in the order thus outlined, 
the argument for our Lord's supreme Di- 
vinity was grounded. 

We need not attempt in this connection 
to define the intrinsic or relative importance 
of these arguments as they may be reviewed 
in the light of the new knowledge which now 
floods the world and as judged by the crit- 
ical methods which have won for themselves 
an assured standing in Bible-studying circles 
everywhere. The question is rather one of 
emphasis; of the relative place to be given 
this argument or that ; of the order in which 
the different truths shall be marshaled in 
order to be most convincing. And yet it may 
be honestly acknowledged that certain meth- 
ods and arguments which were convincing 
and satisfactory in other ages are hardly 
cogent to-day. It does not, however, follow 
that the truths themselves have been under- 
mined; they may simply need to be restated 
and to be enforced and substantiated by 
better processes of reasoning and more mod- 



Our Lord and Master. 13 

era proofs. We believe that this line of dis- 
cussion finds a particularly impressive illus- 
tration in the doctrine now in view. In 
studying it we begin at a different place from 
that at which the fathers began; we put the 
stress on other phases of the truth than 
those which they emphasized; we have a very 
different perspective, personal, historical, 
and theological, from theirs; and we see the 
facts illuminated with greater light than 
did they. Hence, without ignoring the old 
arguments, we may rejoice in the new visions 
of truth granted to us to-day. 

fl 3. God's Unity Fundamental. 

Further, we may escape much perplexity 
if we cease to puzzle ourselves with certain 
insoluble problems connected with the Di- 
vine Being, such as theologians have tried 
in vain to make clear by the terms "hypo- 
static union," "person," "eternal gener- 
ation," and other words of that sort. At the 
very start we may guard ourselves against 



14 Our Lord and Master. 

error by reflecting on the unmistakable fact 
that one of the fundamental truths of the 
Bible is the unity of God. We can afford to 
put the emphasis in this connection just 
where the Savior himself placed it when he 
cited the passage (Deut. vi, 4; Mark xii, 29), 
"The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
strength." The same truth was taught by 
St. Paul, as evidenced by his words (1 Tim. 
i, 17), "Now unto the King eternal, in- 
corruptible, invisible, the only God, be honor 
and glory for ever and ever;" and (1 Tim. 
vi, 15) where he portrays the Almighty as 
"the blessed and only Potentate, the King 
of kings and Lord of lords." In view of the 
clear teachings of Scripture on this subject, 
no man should allow himself to be diverted 
by doctrinal complexities, or speculative am- 
biguities, or mediaeval definitions from the 
fundamental fact of the Divine Unity. 
It is a foolish and an inexcusable thing for 



Our Lord and Master. 15 

Christians to become so confused in their 
conceptions of the Deity as to fancy for a 
moment that there are three Gods, instead 
of One ; and yet we venture to intimate that- 
many have grown up in orthodox Churches 
with that pagan idea taking full possession 
of their minds, largely in consequence of a 
misapprehension and a mistaken use of the 
term Person, as employed by theologians to 
define the distinction between the "Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Spirit;" and further- 
more, in view of a vain attempt to formu- 
late, speculatively, this distinction into a 
satisfying doctrine of the Trinity. For our 
present purposes there is little need of any 
such attempt. It will more nearly meet our 
current needs if we may clearly set forth the 
unmistakable judgment of our Lord him- 
self, of his disciples, and of the Church 
since his day, pertaining to his authority, 
rank, and place in the scale of being, with- 
out befogging our minds with the technical 
phases of theological speculation or attempt- 



16 Our Lord and Master. 

ing to unfold the inner life of Deity by a 
system of metaphysical guesswork. The 
Gospel question is not, "What think ye of the 
doctrine of the Trinity ?" but rather, "What 
think ye of Christ?" 

ft 4. Christ's Matchless Character. 

In aiming at an honest and assured answer 
to the question, Is Christ Divine? we may 
wisely begin by a consideration of himself, 
as he stands before the centuries, the most 
commanding figure in all history, the type 
and the embodiment of the moral ideals that 
have given character to Christendom, a 
matchless personality. We need not for the 
purposes of the moment stop to discuss ques- 
tions pertaining to prophecy, or miracles, or 
inspiration; we are face to face with One 
who is fairer than the children of men and 
altogether lovely, and in his presence these 
questions drop into abeyance as though con- 
scious of their ineptitude. Here is One who, 
born in obscurity, and reared in toil and 



Our Lord and Master. 17 

poverty, and executed as a criminal early 
in his thirties, is to-day the moral Master of 
the modern world, dominating our civiliza- 
tion, deciding ethical standards, exerting 
even in pagan lands a vivifying and trans- 
forming influence upon human character, 
standing at the head of a great army en- 
listed for the conquest of the globe in his 
name, and everywhere renewing by his Word 
and example the higher life of mankind. 
Who in all the ages is worthy to take place 
by his side ? 

The sinlessness of his life gives him abso- 
lute uniqueness, while the virtues and graces 
which he embodied make him a pattern for 
the race. Some of his qualities — humility, 
meekness, forgiving love, compassion for the 
outcast and the lost — were hardly known 
until he revealed them by his example; and 
they were never known at all in union with 
courage, heroic fortitude, commanding lead- 
ership, world-wide enterprise, and supreme 
wisdom, such as he manifested. His perfect 



18 Our Lord and Master. 

life contains in it all possible human per- 
fections blended and correlated, the courage 
of the soldier, the fortitude of the martyr, 
the dignity of the commander, the simplicity 
of the child, the tenderness of womanhood, 
the majesty of the King. In his thirty years 
of obscurity and labor at Nazareth, and in 
the three years of his public ministry, he 
illustrated all the virtues that can adorn 
human character, in their fullness and fru- 
ition. 

As a teacher he dealt with the greatest 
of questions, — the nature of God, the doc- 
trine of prayer, the problems of sin, forgive- 
ness, death, immortality, — problems which 
still stagger and baffle men, even the wisest 
of our race ; but he did not once falter or 
show sign of hesitation or doubt. Only once 
he said, "I do not know," — when talking of 
the time when he himself was to come in 
judgment. As to all other matters in the 
moral and religious world he spoke and acted 
as though he had absolute command of all 



Our Lord and Master. 19 

truth, as though all the wisdom of time and 
of eternity were in his reach. And to-day, 
although nearly nineteen centuries have 
elapsed since he walked the earth, no man 
has gone beyond what he taught in regard to 
these critical problems of human duty and 
destiny. Indeed, if we turn away from what 
he said concerning these topics we are left 
to grope in darkness, without help and with- 
out hope. Taken all in all, he stands before 
us as the sanest, most harmonious, discern- 
ing, wise, and courageous human soul ever 
known, the greatest of teachers and reform- 
ers, the gentlest, most considerate, and lov- 
ing of friends, and the flower of mankind! 

fl5. Supreme Teacher, Perfect Ex- 
ample. 

At the very outset of our inquiry we may 
pertinently ask what Jesus believed and 
taught concerning himself. What claims did 
he make in his own behalf? Did this Man 
know who he was ? Were his own character 



20 Our Lord and Master. 

and consciousness and mission clear to him- 
self ? Did he speak assuredly concerning his 
own nature ? Is his testimony in his own 
behalf compatible with the notion that he 
was a man like other men, only with an in- 
tenser religious consciousness? Did he as- 
sume an attitude with regard to both man 
and God that no mere man would dare to 
take? Can his own words with regard to his 
authority and mission be rationally con- 
strued except on the hypothesis that he was 
of another order of Being? What attitude 
did he take in relation to the race? What 
authority did he assume over men? Did he 
exhibit characteristics which — notwithstand- 
ing his genuine manhood — place him in a 
category by himself alone, apart from all 
other men in any age or land? These are 
some of the questions which must be faced 
and answered in the task before us. And all 
who recognize the perfect poise of his na- 
ture, and who appreciate his unparalleled 
insight into human motives and his mastery 



Ouk Lord and Master. 21 

of all moral and religious questions, ought 
to be willing candidly to weigh his judg- 
ments, his testimonies, and his claims as em- 
bodied in his own words, assuredly reckon- 
ing that what he said was true. 

There are two facts to be borne in mind 
in advance of the consideration of our Lord's 
declarations about himself. The first is this : 
He is recognized on all sides as the supreme 
ethical teacher of the ages. More and more 
the moralities, the laws, and the institutions 
of the world are being built upon the foun- 
dation which he laid. The moral and re- 
ligious ideals which are now regarded by the 
best judges as the noblest that have ever 
been cherished, are, it is conceded on all 
sides, the fruit of his character and his 
teachings. It would be easy to show that 
many skeptics, who deny his Divinity, are 
quick to acknowledge this fact. Two or three 
citations may serve to justify this statement. 
Lecky, the rationalistic historian, concedes 
that "in the character and example of Christ 



22 Our Lord and Master. 

is an enduring principle of regeneration." 
John Stuart Mill, philosopher, critic, agnos- 
tic, testifies : "Everything which is excellent 
in ethics may be brought within the sayings 
of Christ without doing violence to the lan- 
guage. He is . . . the ideal representa- 
tive and guide of humanity." And, not to 
multiply witnesses, Eenan declares that "the 
person of Jesus is at the highest summit of 
human greatness." 

The second point to be noted in this prelim- 
inary statement is this: Jesus Christ stands 
before the world as its only perfect model 
of character. In this respect he has no 
parallel. The saints and heroes who have 
lived since his day confess that their excel- 
lencies were due to his influence, example, 
and grace. He is taken by all critics and 
students, of all shades of belief and unbelief, 
as the perfect Man, the exemplar of all hu- 
man graces and perfections. The child, the 
youth, the man, the laborer, the teacher, the 
preacher, the sufferer, the tempted, the ruler, 



Ouk Lord and Master. 23 

and the subject, all find in his life and teach- 
ings their highest models. 

It is in view of these two almost univer- 
sally acknowledged truths — his supreme sta- 
tion as a moral Teacher and Guide, and his 
matchless perfection as a Man — that we pro- 
pose to examine his claims as embodied in 
his own words. What did this Teacher, on 
whose utterances the best ideals and the 
wisest institutions are now builded, whose 
moral teachings are the basis of ethics 
throughout Christendom, teach concerning 
himself? Further, what did this perfect 
Man, who claimed that none of his enemies 
could convict him of sin, and that he always 
did the things which were pleasing to his 
Father, testify concerning his own Being, 
relationship, authority, and power? If he 
is the greatest of all teachers, then his teach- 
ings about himself ought at least to be 
placed on the same platform with his other 
utterances. If he was the perfect Man, in- 
tellectually, morally, religiously, then he told 



24 Our Lord and Master. 

the truth about himself, as well as about 
other things. With this prefatory state- 
ment before us we are ready now to con- 
sider his claims as embodied in his own 
words. 

ft 6. What did He Claim? 

There are five of these claims which will 
for our purposes here suffice, as they involve 
all others that he made. 

1. He assumed the right to pardon sin- 
ners. When he healed the man sick of the 
palsy, as recorded in the ninth of Matthew, 
he told the people that one aim of his mir- 
acle was that they might "know that the 
Son of man hath power on earth to forgive 
sins." Is not the act of pardoning a Divine 
prerogative? Has any one less than the 
Divine Being been endowed with this royal 
privilege? In all human governments the 
pardoning prerogative belongs to the su- 
preme ruler, the chief executive ; no one else 
dares for a moment to assume it. Did Paul 



Our Lord and Master. 25 

ever pretend to pardon a sinner ? The right 
to proclaim absolution, claimed by priestly 
authority, is not by any means this supreme 
function of which we are writing, which is 
claimed by our Lord alone. Let this fact, 
then, come clearly before the mind, that 
Jesus of Nazareth claimed to exercise this 
Divine prerogative, the pardoning power in 
the government of the universe. That 
claim, standing alone, would mean a great 
deal, but it does not stand by itself. It is 
supplemented and enlarged by other claims. 
2. One of these is involved in his great 
invitation (Matt, xi, 28, 29), wherein he 
offers soul-rest to all laboring and heavy- 
laden ones who will come unto him. That 
he daily justifies this promise is proof of his 
superhuman authority and power. Of all 
those who have ever spoken as messengers 
of heaven he is the only one who has made 
such an offer. His invitation in any other 
mouth but his own would be but mockery; 
coming from him, and backed by the testi- 



26 Our Lord and Master. 

mony of countless myriads, who declare that 
they have come to him, and that they have 
found him as good as his word, the claim 
forms another link in the chain of Divine 
logic which proclaims him to the world as 
the Omnipotent Savior. If he can and does 
give rest to the soul of the penitent, the 
tempted, the sorrowing, the forlorn, the 
poverty-stricken, must he not be more than 
a mere man? 

3. A further claim that he makes sets 
him forth as the supreme Judge. In the 
twenty-fifth of Matthew he pictures himself 
on "the throne of his glory," deciding the 
final destiny of all men. In St. John's Gos- 
pel (v, 29) he says, "The Father hath com- 
mitted all judgment unto the Son." In as- 
suming this title of Judge, and in picturing 
himself as performing the functions of that 
office on the throne of the universe, he puts 
a vast distance between himself and even the 
greatest of his followers. He assumes that 
he possesses a degree of knowledge, of jus- 



Our Lord and Master. 27 

tice, and of authority which, taken alone, in- 
volves the use of the adjectives Infinite and 
Divine. Who can judge the motives, the 
hearts, the lives of all men, and fairly assign 
to them their destiny in the eternal world, 
unless he possesses omniscience, perfect 
goodness, unerring justice, and almighty 
power ? When, therefore, our Lord assumes 
to be the Judge of the human race he claims 
a Divine office and rank which forbid his 
classification with even the greatest of men. 
4. Still another fact remains for us to 
note here: He declared himself to be the 
Son of God. He was, it is to be acknowl- 
edged, chary of assuming this title during 
his ministry, although several times he dis- 
tinctly did so. But at his trial before the 
Jewish Sanhedrin (Matt, xxvi, 63, 64; Mark 
xiv, 61, 62; Luke xxii, 67-71), when the high 
priest said, "I adjure thee by the living God, 
art thou the Christ, the Son of God?" the 
reply came without hesitation, "I am." Our 
Lord must have known that this claim would 



28 Our Lord and Master. 

be understood as blasphemy, and that it 
would lead to the cross. Under these cir- 
cumstances, then, under the sanction of an 
oath, and in the face of death, he said, "I 
am the Son of God/' It would be idle 
for any one to allege that this expression 
meant no more than simply the declaration 
that He was, like any devout, believing man, 
"a son of God." If he did not mean to 
assume the very highest relations to the 
Supreme Being and make himself appear in 
a unique sense the representation and em- 
bodiment of Deity to men, then his words 
mean nothing at all. To the Jewish Sanhe- 
drin, to his disciples afterward, and to the 
Church in all ages, this final testimony 
which he made in his own behalf meant that 
he was asserting a Divine relationship, au- 
thority, and jurisdiction. 

5. A final claim, made by Jesus Christ in 
his farewell utterances to his disciples, may 
be indicated as transcending even the tre- 
mendous ones which have already been briefly 



Our Lord and Master. 29 

outlined. It is found in the Gospel of John, 
chapters xiv-xvi, in connection with the pro- 
visions which the Master is there announcing 
for the support of his Church after his de- 
parture from the earth. In several passages 
he emphasizes his promise that the Holy 
Spirit, in new power and with larger gifts 
than were ever known by human beings in 
former times, shall be bestowed upon his fol- 
lowers. When these various covenants are 
brought together they give us a fresh im- 
pression of the regal prerogatives which our 
Lord assumes in declaring them. Look at 
them: 

"I will pray the Father, and he shall give 
you another Comforter, that he may be with 
you forever, even the Spirit of truth. . . . 
The Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom 
the Father will send in my name, he shall 
teach you all things and bring to your re- 
membrance all that I said unto you. . . . 
When the Comforter is come, whom I will 
send unto you from the Father, even the 



30 Our Lord and Master. 

Spirit of truth that proceedeth from the 
Father, he shall bear witness of me. . . . 
It is expedient for yon that I go away: for 
if I go not away, the Comforter will not come 
unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto 
you." (John xiv, 16, 26; xv, 26; xvi, 7.) 

At a glance one notes here that our Lord 
associates himself with the Father in the 
promise to bestow the Spirit of truth upon 
his disciples, and in convicting power upon 
the world. This utterance goes so far in its 
assumptions of heavenly authority beyond any 
which mortals might dream of asserting that 
we marvel how it can be fairly faced by any 
honest denier of the doctrine now under con- 
sideration. Jesus of Nazareth, after all other 
declarations of his ministry involving his su- 
preme rank, now in so many words arrogates 
to himself the right to give the Holy Spirit 
in answer to prayer; he plainly asserts that 
his jurisdiction includes the ministry of the 
Comforter. What angel, patriarch, prophet, 
or apostle ever, in his most daring and tran- 



Our Lord and Master. 31 

scendent hours, even for a moment ventured 
to think of making such a claim? Were any 
other man who ever lived to make a promise 
like that which Jesus uttered in the above 
passages we would decide at once, and 
rightly too, that he was out of his senses, or 
else that he was a blasphemous pretender. 
The authority to impart the highest spiritual 
blessings; to send forth the Comforter from 
the skies on his mission of awakening, 
quickening, tuition and consolation into hu- 
man hearts ; to administer, as from the throne 
of the universe, the vast resources of grace, 
and literally to pour them out upon needy 
men and nations, — who possesses this su- 
preme right ? To whom alone does it belong ? 
Who owns and orders the administration of 
the Divine Spirit ? Who has authority to hear 
and answer prayer for his descent? When 
we consider with candor these questions and 
what they involve, and then reflect upon the 
unqualified promise which our Lord makes 
in the case, we stand face to face with one 



32 Our Lord and Master. 

of the unique prerogatives which he assumed, 
and which no other mortal ever dared lay 
claim to. 

ft 7. The Fourth Gospel. 

The only way by which this argument may 
be evaded is to deny the authority of the 
Fourth Gospel, from which the words just 
cited are taken. There is no rational escape, 
however, in that direction. Those who are 
determined to break the force of the claim 
urged above can not escape from the dilemma 
in which the facts involve them by rejecting 
this Gospel as not written by John or dis- 
crediting it as an anonymous production of 
the second century. It may hardly be wise 
to spend any time just here with such ob- 
jectors, but it is worth while to assure those 
who are not familiar with the "Johannine" 
discussion that the great Biblical scholars of 
to-day, the men who have devoted years to 
the unraveling of the subtle and difficult 
problems connected with the Fourth Gospel, 



Ottk Lord and Master. 33 

are more and more convinced that it was 
written by St. John. For more than half a 
century a fierce battle has been waged in re- 
gard to this Gospel, but for the past fifteen 
or twenty years the gains of the conservatives 
have been vast ; most of the recent works bear- 
ing on the case, written by Beyschlag, Sanday, 
Westcott, Ezra Abbot, George P. Fisher, H. 
R. Reynolds, Godet, Weiss, Lightfoot, Bwald, 
and Luthardt — have fully traversed every ob- 
jection that has been made to the belief of 
the ages that St. John, the beloved disciple, 
wrote this Gospel; not a fact, argument, or 
assertion bearing on the problem has been 
neglected, with this assured result in the out- 
come of the investigation, that year by year, 
as more light has been directed toward that 
Gospel, as additional scholars have grappled 
with its problems, as the external and internal 
evidences have been freshly examined and 
tested by all the critical methods of our time, 
the conviction has become more clear and pro- 
found that this age-long faith in the Johan- 
3 



34 Our Lord and Master. 

nine authorship of that Book is based on 
facts which can not be shaken. Indeed, Dr. 
Charles A. Briggs, a leader in the ranks of 
modern Biblical criticism, says that the vin- 
dication of the Johannic authorship is "the 
grandest critical achievement of our cen- 
tury;" Matthew Arnold suggests that the 
man who follows the thesis of Baur and others 
that this Gospel is "entirely unhistorical" 
evinces thereby a conclusive sign that he lacks 
"real critical insight;"* and the verdict of 
the great German professor, Heinrich Ewald, 
written after he had given the whole ques- 
tion a careful and complete investigation, 
has become the conviction of multitudes who 
have, with more or less care, studied the 
Johannine problems: "That John is really 
the author of this Gospel, and that no other 
planned or interpreted it, than he who at 
all times is named as its author, can not be 
doubted or denied; . . . every argument 
from every quarter to which we can look, 

* Literature and Dogma, p. 152. 



Our Lord and Master. 35 

every trace and record, combine together to 
render any serious doubt upon the question 
absolutely impossible." We are not, there- 
fore, evading any issue which needs to be 
candidly faced when we place before the 
reader these claims of the Master cited from 
the Fourth Gospel. The Christian believer 
has as sure a warranty for his faith in the 
validity and historicity of this Gospel as for 
his faith in the three Synoptic Gospels, so 
called, which precede it. 

Now the case is before us so far as his own 
witness-bearing is concerned; it speaks for 
itself, and needs no advocate or interpreter. 
Jesus of Nazareth — the sinless Man, and the 
wisest of moral teachers — claimed that he 
could forgive sins and give rest to all per- 
turbed and needy souls; he declared himself 
to be the Supreme Judge of men, and in a 
unique sense the Son of God ; and he crowned 
these revelations of his supremacy in the uni- 
verse by pledging to his disciples the bestow- 
ment of the Holy Spirit in response to their 



36 Our Lord and Master. 

supplications ? We submit that these asserted 
prerogatives of Jesus Christ, which are in- 
finitely beyond the reach of man, must be 
fairly considered by those who in any fashion 
profess to call him Master. They are declara- 
tions which can not with candor be evaded; 
they look us in the eye as we open the 
Gospels. What shall be done with the testi- 
mony of this Man, spoken at various times 
during his ministry, with the avowecL purpose 
of giving his disciples a true conception of 
his rightful rank and his jurisdiction over 
them? With what sort of consistency can 
an honest man to-day call Jesus the greatest 
of teachers, the most remarkable of all re- 
ligious geniuses, the one Man who, beyond all 
his fellows, was most closely allied to God, 
without at the same time accepting the tes- 
timony which this Teacher gives as to his 
own place and power in the moral universe? 
He had matchless insight into other hearts — ■ 
did he not know his own? He knew how to 
estimate the real and relative rank of all 



Our Lord and Master. 37 

around him; the believing and the doubting, 
the humble and the proud, the royal and the 
beggarly souls were all open to his scrutiny. 
Did he not know, without question, where he 
himself belonged ? Is not his testimony about 
his own character and his relation to men 
as clear as the sunshine? This testimony, 
illuminated by the light which nearly nine- 
teen Christian centuries have thrown upon it, 
can it be reasonably interpreted otherwise 
than in accord with the words of that ancient 
chant, sung in many ages and lands from 
time immemorial, "Thou art the King of 
glory, Christ ?" 

|[ 8. Is He to be Worshiped? 

A further truth to be considered may be 
fitly mated with those which have just passed 
in review before us, namely: Our Lord has 
been worshiped as Divine ever since he left 
the earth. Even while he was here below 
there was paid to him occasionally a kind of 
homage which was at least akin to that which 



36 Our Lord and Master. 

is due to Almighty God. The New Testa- 
ment is full of illustrations of this truth. 
Some of them may be noted. We have 
hardly space to comment upon them. 



In Matt, ii, 11, we read that the Wise 
Men, when they saw the child Jesus, "fell 
down and worshiped him." Were this the 
only instance of such honor accorded to 
Jesus Christ we might hesitate about build- 
ing any doctrine upon it, for we do not know 
how much these Magi knew about Jesus, or 
what facilities they had for obtaining the 
truth. It is worth while, however, to con- 
sider this first instance of worship paid to 
our Lord, while yet "an infant of days," as 
a prelude of other ascriptions of Divine 
homage which he received. 



Near the opening of his ministry (as re- 
corded in Matt, viii, 2) we find a leper cast- 



Our Lord and Master. 39 

ing himself at the feet of Jesus: "There 
came a certain leper, and worshiped him." 
The man was not rebuked, nor was his touch 
disdained. The Master recognized and hon- 
ored his faith by healing the leprosy, with 
which he was dying. In the next chapter, 
Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, "came and 
worshiped him, and said, My daughter is even 
now dead; but come and lay thy hand upon 
her and she shall live." Once more the act 
of worship was requited by an act of healing, 
in which the dead girl was brought to 
life again. In the same Gospel (xiv, 33) 
we find this record in connection with the 
miracle whereby the Savior walked upon the 
waters, and rescued sinking Peter from 
drowning, "And they that were in the boat 
worshiped him, saying, Of a truth thou 
art the Son of God." Later in the same 
record (Matt, xv, 21-28; Mark vii, 24-30), the 
Syrophenician woman approached the Sa- 
vior in behalf of her demoniac daughter, 
pursued him into the house, "fell at his 



40 OUK LOKD AND MASTER. 

feet, and worshiped him, saying, Lord, help 
me!" Instead of disclaiming her worship, 
the Lord honored her confidence, cured her 
daughter, and said, a O woman, great is thy 
faith!" 

Another typical instance is in association 
with the cure of the man born blind. After 
the healed man had been cast out of the 
synagogue by the Jews, we read (John ix, 
35-38) : 

"Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and find- 
ing him, he said, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? 
He answered and said, And who is he, Lord, that I may 
believe on him? Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both 
seen him, and he it is that speaketh with thee. And 
he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshiped him." 

Again, there seems to have been in the 
heart of the demoniac of Gadara some subtle 
instinct, even in his demented condition, 
suggesting to him that Jesus was an object 
of worship, for Mark (v, 6) tells us that 
"seeing Jesus afar off he ran and worshiped 
him." In this case before any word of 
homage could be uttered he was over- 



Ottr Lord and Master. 41 

powered by the demoniacal influence, and 
he jeered and blasphemed instead of wor- 
shiping. 

,fl 9. The Penitent Malefactor. 

There is a final instance of this sort which 
occurred when our Lord was dying, and 
which is worthy of enlargement and com- 
ment in this connection — the prayer of the 
penitent transgressor (Luke xxiii, 39-43). 
That incident alone, taking it in all its sug- 
gestions and lessons, and weighing it fairly, 
contains abundant proof that the dying man 
believed that Jesus Christ was in some 
unique sense a Divine King who had an un- 
disputed dominion somewhere beyond the 
grave; and that furthermore the Lord un- 
derstood this to be the meaning of the 
prayer, and in that sense answered the pe- 
tition, assuming a jurisdiction over "the 
world to come" which can not be defined by 
any other term except the word divine. Let 
us consider the scene. 



42 Our Lord and Master. 

The Master is dying on the cross, with 
two other condemned men suffering a similar 
penalty, one on either hand. 

"A crown of thorns on that dishonored head! 
Those hands that healed the sick now pierced 

with nails ! 
Those feet that wandered homeless through the 

world 
Now crossed, and bleeding, and at rest forever !" 

As Jesus hung there in humiliation and pain 
there came to his ears a single melodious 
note to vary the unceasing babble of jeers 
and curses which smote his burdened heart — 
a strain of prayer from the parched lips of 
one of the dying malefactors. This penitent 
robber saw over the cross the inscription, 
" Jesus the King;" he heard the scribes 
crying out, "He saved others, himself he 
can not save;" he listened to the prayer 
which the Master had uttered in behalf of 
his murderers, "Father, forgive them, they 
know not what they do;" and out of these 
scattered fragments of truth he built up a 



Ouk Lord and Master. 43 

structure of faith that will be beautiful for- 
ever. He got hold of the idea that Jesus 
was a King, — he inferred that his empire 
must be beyond death, somewhere in eter- 
nity, and with that faith he cried, "Lord, 
remember me when thou comest into thy 
kingdom." 

Under these circumstances, had Jesus 
Christ been a mere man, or simply a super- 
human creature, endowed with angelic pre- 
rogatives, common honesty would have re- 
quired him to say, "I have no kingdom be- 
yond the grave, I am a mortal like thyself;" 
or, "I am limited in my administration; I 
have no authority after death." But not in 
this way does he answer the malefactor. He 
gives instant and unhesitating response to 
the dying man; he answers as one ought to 
answer who is superior to pain, and disease, 
and time, and death, and all things mortal 
and human. His words are the words of a 
Divine King— worthy of the Lord of lords 
and the King of kings: "Verily I say unto 



44 Our Lord and Master. 

thee : To-day shalt thou be with me in Para- 
dise." And then, as Mrs. Browning has 
quaintly said: 

" Death upon his face 
Is rather shine than shade, 
A tender shine by looks beloved made. 
He seemeth dying in a quiet place, 
And less by iron wounds in hands and feet 
Than heartbroke by new joy too sudden and 
sweet.' ' 

We can not understand how any fair- 
minded student can fail to see in the prayer 
of this crucified robber unmistakable proof 
of his faith in the Divine authority of Jesus 
of Nazareth; or fail to find in the answer 
which the Savior gave to the prayer an un- 
questionable token of the prerogatives of 
Deity which it implies. 



After the resurrection the women to 
whom he revealed himself (Matt, xxviii, 
9) "came and took hold of his feet and wor- 
shiped him." Soon afterwards in the same 



Our Lord and Master. 45 

chapter we read of the eleven disciples on 
the mountain in Galilee, that "when they 
saw Jesus they worshiped him." In imme- 
diate connection with this exhibition of 
their faith, adoration, and loyalty ; he ut- 
tered his commission, in which he said, "All 
power is given unto me in heaven and on 
earth. Lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the world." In the closing verses 
of St. Luke's Gospel we find the record made, 
that immediately after the ascension his 
disciples "worshiped him, and returned to 
Jerusalem with great joy; and were contin- 
ually in the temple, blessing God." 

Jf 10. Never Disclaimed Worship. 

It ought to be said, as to these incidents 
quoted, that in no case did Jesus disclaim 
any of the honors accorded him. Very dif- 
ferent from the attitude of the Savior was 
the manner of Peter when (Acts x, 25) 
Cornelius the centurion "fell down and 
worshiped him" as though he were a god 



46 Our Lokd and Master. 

or a supernatural being of some higher 
order than man. Peter instantly "raised 
him up, saying, Stand up; I myself also 
am a man." A similar instance occurred in 
the life of the Apostle to the Gentiles, as re- 
corded in Acts xiv, 11-18. The mercurial 
people at Lystra, in view of a healing wrought 
by the two missionaries, cried out, "The gods 
are come down to us in the likeness of men. 
And they called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul 
Mercury." Then, when the priest of Jupiter 
and the people would have offered sacrifices 
to them as unto the gods, "Barnabas and 
Paul rent their garments, and cried out : Sirs, 
why do ye these things ? We also are men of 
like passions with you; . . . turn from 
these vain things unto the living God !" 

Furthermore, John, on Patmos, amazed 
and awe-stricken with the things that had 
been revealed to him, sets forth the same 
lesson. Hear his own words, Eev. xix, 9, 10: 

"And he saith unto me, These are true words of God. 
And I fell down before his feet to worship him. And he 
saith unto me, See thou do it not: I am a fellow-servant 



Our Lord and* Master. 47 

with thee, and with thy brethren that hold the testi- 
mony of Jesus : worship God: for the testimony of Jesus 
is the word of prophecy." 

And again, Kev. xxii, 8 : 

"And I, John, am he that heard and saw these 
things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to wor- 
ship before the feet of the angel which showed me these 
things. And he saith unto me, See thou do it not: I am 
a fellow-servant with thee and with thy brethren the 
prophets, and with them which keep the words of this 
Book: worship God." 



Now, is it not clear that if Jesus Christ 
had been merely man he ought in all candor 
and honesty to have done just as this angel 
did, and just as Peter did, and just as 
Paul and Barnabas did, when Divine honors 
were rendered to them? He ought instantly 
to have disclaimed them, and instructed 
men to render these supreme honors to 
God only. Instead of making the slightest 
disclaimer, however, he accepted worship 
as his due; he acted as though he was re- 
ceiving only what it was the bounden duty 
of man to give, — such manifestations of 



48 Our Lord and Master. 

gratitude, trust, loyalty, homage, and adora- 
tion as belong to the supreme God. In this 
policy he was consistent with his own ut- 
terance, that "men ought to honor the Son 
even as they honor the Father." Surely 
these instances of worship paid to the Savior 
ought to help to substantiate his claims to 
supreme Divinity. 

These multiplied instances show us that 
our Lord, even during his career of pov- 
erty and humiliation, was accustomed to 
accept acts of homage and worship without 
in any manner disclaiming them. 

fl 11. A Seeming Exception. 

Possibly some may judge that the case of 
the rich young ruler affords an exception. 
As this is absolutely the only disclaimer of 
any sort which is credited to the Master dur- 
ing his whole ministry it deserves careful 
attention. We believe that a close examina- 
tion will show that the disclaimer is only an 
apparent one. The young man came run- 



OUK LOKD AND MASTER. 49 

ning, knelt at the feet of Christ (Matt, 
xix, 16-29; Mark x, 17-30; Luke xviii, 18-23) 
and cried out, "Good Master, what good thing 
shall I do that I may have eternal life ?" The 
Lord discerned the secrets of this yearning but 
wealth-loving heart, and strove first to bring 
him to scrutinize his own motives and take 
a look inward, by asking, "Why callest thou 
me good? None is good save one, even 
God." That is: "What reason have you 
for this epithet? Do you know what it in- 
volves? Are you ready in fact to acknowl- 
edge me as Lord ? Do you really believe what 
you say ? Are you prepared to obey my word, 
and do my will, and accept my law as the 
expression of the Supreme Good? What 
standard of goodness have you in your mind ?" 
The words of the Savior seem to have been 
intended to lead the inquirer to consider what 
his own language really involved, and to help 
him to a perception of what is really good. 
It may be also suggested that this young man 
was not ready at that moment for the higher 
4 



50 Our Lord and Master. 

instruction which Christ gave to others in re- 
gard to his prerogatives and rank. At any 
rate, it is well to recollect that this is the 
only place in the whole Gospel history where 
anything like a disclaimer of highest honors 
can be found in the words of our Lord. This 
one difficult passage, therefore, is not to be 
taken as counteracting and contradicting the 
scores of passages in which he makes de- 
mands and utters claims which involve the 
consciousness on his part of possessing su- 
preme authority over all men; especially as 
the Master by his command, immediately 
following the seeming disclaimer, assumed 
regal supremacy over the inquiring man, and 
took the attitude of One who is without ques- 
tion the Arbiter of human destiny. 

fl 12. Example of Apostolic Church. 

A further question arises, however: Was 
Christ also worshiped by the apostolic 
Church? After he was taken out of sight 
and touch, did his followers continue to honor 



Our Lord and Master. 51 

him with that full measure of reverence, serv- 
ice, and worship which is due to Deity? It 
will be easy to answer this question briefly 
but conclusively. 

After the ascension of the Savior, we find 
recorded early in the Book of Acts an in- 
stance of worship offered to him. The 
eleven disciples, in the meeting which they 
held, sought his guidance and decision in 
their work of filling up their number to 
twelve. Who can reasonably doubt that the 
prayer contained in Acts i, 24, 25, was of- 
fered to the glorified Savior? Bead the 
passage, and judge: 

"And they prayed, and said, Thou, Lord, which 
knowest the hearts of all men, show of these two the 
one whom thou hast chosen, to take the place in this 
ministry and apostleship, from which Judas fell away, 
that he might go to his own place." 

Dr. Whedon's comment on this prayer is 
so terse and suggestive as to demand quota- 
tion: 

"Was this prayer offered to Christ? He claims the 
prerogative of searching hearts. (Rev. ii, 23.) He was 
the true chooser of apostles. And he was customarily 



52 Our Lord and Master. 

addressed, especially in Luke's Gospel, by the title 
Lord; and is styled Lord Jesus in verse 21. The prob- 
abilities, then, are that the ascended Jesus was here 
invoked." 



The dying words of Stephen involve the 
same truth. When about to depart, he 
prayed to the Savior not to lay the sins of 
his enemies "to their charge/' and then 
commended his soul to the care of the Son 
of man. The record represents him (Acts 
vii, 59) in the midst of the stoning, as 
"calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit." This appeal, 
made by a dying man, in the extremity of 
danger and need, sinking in the midst of 
a persecuting crowd of foes, who were 
stoning him to death, indicates the invin- 
cible faith of the man who made it. Such 
a prayer could not have been spoken under 
such circumstances unless the man who ut- 
tered it had been a believer in the Divinity 
of the Savior. His act was an act of worship, 
if there is one upon record. 



Our Lord and Master. 53 

Not to multiply instances, we turn to 
an incident in the life of St. Paul, recorded 
by himself in one of his undisputed epistles, 
2 Cor. xii, 7-9 : 

"And lest I should be exalted above measure through 
the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me 
a thorn In the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet 
me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this 
thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart 
from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient 
for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. 
Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my in- 
firmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me," 

Can there be a reasonable doubt in a 
candid mind concerning the facts in this 
bit of history? Did not the apostle take 
his greatest trials in prayer to the Lord 
Jesus ? Did he not regard the Savior, there- 
fore, as a proper object of worship? 

Closely accordant with the doctrine of 
this passage is his teaching in Phil, ii, 9-11, 
where Paul, after dwelling upon the hu- 
miliation of Christ, "even unto death," says : 

" Wherefore, God also hath highly exalted him, and 
given him a name which is above every name : that at 
the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 



54 Our Lord and Master. 

heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth ; 
and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ 
is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." 

If these utterances do not indicate the 
conviction and belief of Paul that Jesus was 
in such sense divine as to be properly an 
object of worship — then what do they mean? 
The truth is that the assumption of the Di- 
vinity of the Savior underlies the whole struc- 
ture of PauPs work as an apostle, and. is un- 
derneath all his writings. This pivotal truth 
is not only clearly asserted, but taken for 
granted; and, interwoven with argument, 
allegory, illustration, quotation, appeal, and 
exhortation, we find everywhere his funda- 
mental belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of 
God and as the Divine Savior. 



The Book of Eevelation abounds with 
instances of Divine worship paid to the 
glorified Lord. St. John tells us (Eev. v, 
12, 13) that he heard "the voice of thou- 
sands of thousands" round about the throne, 



Our Lord and Master. 55 

"Saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb 
that hath been slain to receive the power, and riches, 
and wisdom, and might, and honor and glory, and bless- 
ing. And every created thing which is in the heaven 
and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, 
and all things that are in them, heard I saying, Unto 
him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be 
the blessing, and the honor, and the glory, and the 
dominion, for ever and ever." 

Again (Eev. vii, 9, 10), St. John gives us 
another vision embodying the same doctrine : 

"After these things I saw, and behold, a great mul- 
titude, which no man could number, out of every na- 
tion, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues, stand- 
ing before the throne and before the Lamb, arrayed in 
white robes, and palms in their hands; and they cry 
with a great voice, saying, Salvation unto our God who 
sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb." 

In a later passage he declares (Kev. xi, 15) 
that he heard great voices in heaven, which 
said, "The kingdom of the world is become 
the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ; 
and he shall reign for ever and ever." Near 
the close of the book (Eev. xxii, 1, 3), he 
speaks again, and again, concerning the 
"throne of God, and of the Lamb," in a 
way which indicates beyond question his con- 



56 Our Lord and Master. 

eeption of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, 
as One whose rightful place in the universe 
is on the throne, crowned and sceptered 
with the supreme honors of the Godhead, 
and accepting as his rightful due the praises 
and worship of the heavenly hosts. 

,fl; 13. New Testament Term, "Worship/' 

The question might arise in some minds, 
however, whether the term worship, as used 
in the Gospels and in other books in the 
New Testament in connection with acts of 
homage paid to Jesus Christ, is the same 
word which is used in describing the Divine 
honors ascribed in other places as due to 
God as our Father. This is very easily an- 
swered. 

We have already cited a dozen instances 
in which it is recorded in the Gospels that 
Jesus was "worshiped" at various times 
during his ministry on earth. The original 
term in each of these cases is the chief word 
translated worship in the New Testament, — 



Our Lord and Master. 57 

proshuneo (irpoo-Kwio)); it is used more 
than sixty times. It is the term used by 
Satan in his temptation of Christ, "If thou 
wilt worship me, all shall be thine." It is 
the term found in the command, quoted by 
the Savior, "Thou shalt worship the Lord 
thy God." The Master also uses this word, 
and its derivatives, in his conversation with 
the Samaritan woman at JacoVs well, re- 
corded in John iv, 20-24. Mne times in 
the space of these four verses the word 
worship,, or worshiper, occurs in this con- 
versation, and each time this term is the 
one which is used. Literally meaning the 
act of kneeling or outward obeisance, it was 
used in the classics, and it came to be used 
in the New Testament, to express the 
highest adoration which the human soul can 
pay to the Divine Being. Out of all instances 
of its employment in the entire New Testa- 
ment there can not be found more than 
two or three in which the term is obviously 
used in an accommodated sense to express 



58 Our Lokd and Master. 

profound respect such as might be due from 
a subject to a king, or from a slave to his 
master. 

This is the term which is employed to 
define the acts of veneration, the appeals, 
the homage, the prayers, the praises of- 
fered to the Savior, alike while he was on 
earth, by those who came seeking help at 
his hand, by his disciples in view of his 
marvelous works, on land and sea, by his 
endangered followers, in critical periods of 
distress and danger, and by the heavenly 
hosts, as witnessed by St. John and set forth 
in the Book of Eevelation. There is no 
stronger term whereby the sacred writers 
can define the act and express the obliga- 
tion of worship. 

There are many other passages in the New 
Testament fraught with the truth under 
consideration, and we have had to pass by 
for the* time the wonderfully rich and fruit- 
ful teachings to be found in Hebrews, ex- 
cept that we recall the fact that it is ex- 



Our Lord and Master. 59 

pressly taught in the first chapter of that 
Epistle, that the heavenly proclamation 
which ushered the "Firstborn" into the world 
was this command, "Let all the angels of 
God worship him!" 

If 14. The Primitive Christians. 

Another pertinent question may arise here 
in some minds: What impression did the 
early Christian believers, the immediate suc- 
cessors to the apostolic Church, and those who 
came after them, form concerning the char- 
acter and claims of our Lord? They were 
in touch with men who by one or two re- 
moves had seen and heard the personal fol- 
lowers of the Master; an uninterrupted cur- 
rent of apostolic testimony and instruction, 
custom and example, flowed all about them; 
what did they think of, how did they feel 
toward, Him who had founded the new faith ? 
Rescued, many of them, from the worship of 
idols, saved from the vices and degradations 
of paganism — what convictions did they 



60 Our Lord and Master. 

cherish in regard to the authority of the 
great Teacher? If the worship of Jesus 
Christ is idolatry, if it is but one way out of 
many whereby honors due only to the Deity 
are paid to a creature, these converts were in 
a condition to recognize that fact at once. 
Were they taught simply to revere him as 
an example, to follow him as a Teacher, and 
to love him as a Friend, but not to render 
him any higher honors ? This would seem to 
be the conclusion of those who claim that 
what they call the "simplicity of the early 
Gospel" was soon perverted by teachers who 
imported into it the Jewish doctrine of the 
Logos, and certain philosophic teachings from 
Greece, out of which grew the present ortho- 
dox doctrine of the Divinity of Jesus Christ. 
It is impossible to determine how any 
candid student of ecclesiastical history can 
manufacture such a conclusion out of the 
unquestionable facts in the case. That there 
was a mutual effect wrought — a play and 
counter-play of forces, convictions, beliefs, 



Our Lord and Master. 61 

and customs/ a common clash of ideas — when 
the two civilizations (the new one originat- 
ing in the Gospel, and the old one long iden- 
tified with the life of the Eoman Empire) 
came together, and that each set of opposing 
forces modified and affected the other to a 
greater or less degree, no one can doubt ; but 
that the pivotal teachings of the apostles as 
to the authority and Divine rank of the 
Master, and his rightful title to supreme 
homage, suffered any material change in 
transmissal, no one has any historical ground 
for believing. 

The truth is that teachings and faith 
of the second and third centuries do not vary 
in this regard from those which were in vogue 
during the lifetime of Paul, and which are 
embodied in his unquestioned Epistles. It 
would be easy to justify this statement by 
elaborate citations, had we the space. One 
or two must suffice. One proof of the belief 
and practice of the post-apostolic Church, 
familiar to all students of Church history, 



62 Our Lord and Master. 

comes to light in the correspondence of a 
celebrated Eoman official, a friend of the 
Emperor Trajan, Pliny the Younger, whose 
Epistles constitute one of the most interest- 
ing and significant relics of ancient Eoman 
literature. Some of these letters, written to 
Trajan by Pliny while serving as propraetor 
in Bithynia, in Asia Minor, A. D. 112, are 
devoted to his report of certain investigations 
which he had been carrying on in regard to 
the Christians in that province. He tells 
the emperor that these people are accustomed, 
according to their own confessions, to as- 
semble before daybreak on a certain day, and 
to sing, alternately or responsively, among 
themselves "hymns to Christ as G-od." This 
testimony, coming from a man who was try- 
ing to suppress the new faith, is irrefragable. 
About twenty years later the Emperor 
Hadrian in a letter records among his im- 
pressions gained during a visit to Egypt that 
the people of Alexandria were divided in their 
worship — "by many Serapis is worshiped, by 



Ouk Lord and Master. 63 

multitudes Christ is adored." Thirty years 
after this the Greek satirist, Lueian, ridicules 
the new faith in this manner: "The Chris- 
tians are still worshiping that great man who 
was gibbeted in Palestine." About the same 
time the ablest opponent of Christianity in 
that old world, Celsus, assails the followers 
of Christ on the ground of their idolatry. He 
castigates them with his lampooning wit be- 
cause, as he suggests, they are worshiping a 
corpse, the body of a crucified man. Similar 
charges were brought against the early Chris- 
tians on every side, year after year, and they 
found record even in the rough cartoons of 
that age. Some of our readers have seen, 
perhaps, a reproduction of the rude carving 
found in 1857 among the ruins of the Pala- 
tine Palace in Eome. The sketch represents 
a human body, surmounted by an ass's head, 
and nailed to a cross, before which a man 
bows with a gesture of adoration. Under- 
neath is the inscription in Greek : Alexamenos 
adores his God. 



64 OUK LOKD AND MASTER. 

These testimonies from the enemies of 
the Christian religion, based on the evident 
belief and invincible customs of the early 
Church, are of the most valuable kind, as in- 
dicating to us the truth that the faith of 
the apostles in the Deity of our Lord was 
not changed as it was handed down from one 
generation to another. This witness borne by 
the foes of the faith is made all the more 
impressive when we consider that the Chris- 
tian writers of that early age do not deny 
the accusation that Christians worship Jesus 
Christ; they accept the charge as true, and 
proceed to justify their custom as the highest 
of obligations. Indeed, it would seem that 
the one single item in the Christian's creed 
in those primitive days embodied his faith in 
the Lord Jesus as in the highest sense the 
Divine Savior. 

This faith is pathetically involved in the 
prayers of the martyrs, age after age. Pages 
of their testimony might be transcribed to 
show that in the hour of their examination 



Our Lord and Master. 65 

by torture, and when they were torn with 
wild beasts, given into the hands of the exe- 
cutioners, and devoted to indescribable death- 
agonies, their dying cries were appeals to 
their Lord as One who was mighty to save. 
Eead their utterances, and decide from these 
whether or not the martyrs believed with all 
their hearts that Jesus Christ is entitled to 
worship: "Deliver me, Christ; I suffer in 
thy name;" "0 Christ, thou Son of God, de- 
liver thy servants;" "Thanks to thee, 
Christ ; for thee do I suffer thus ;" "Preserve 
my soul, guard my spirit, that I be not 
ashamed; Christ, I pray thee, grant me 
power of endurance." These are some of the 
expiring utterances of the men who loved the 
Master more than they loved life, and who 
were willing to die rather than recant their 
faith or deny their Lord. Surely no exposi- 
tion of their testimony is needed in order 
to assure us that they believed absolutely in 
the supreme dignity and power of their Ee- 
deemer. 
5 



66 Our Lord and Master. 

In view, then, of the data which the early 
centuries afford, can there be any possible 
question as to the place which Jesus Christ 
held in the thoughts and beliefs, hearts and 
lives of his followers? 

ft 15. Early Christian Hymns. 

From still another field abundant proofs 
can be cited to establish the place which the 
Eedeemer has occupied in human thought 
throughout the ages — the realm of poetry and 
hymnody. The poets are rightly called seers ; 
their province is vision; they are gifted with 
the power to see, and are endowed with the 
faculty to unfold, truths which are invisible 
to ordinary eyes. Their ministry in our own 
time as interpreters of the significance of 
nature has been revolutionary in its influ- 
ence on English literature and on our views 
of the material world. After scientists have 
unfolded the structure and functions of bird 
and bee and blossom and sea and mountain, 
it yet remains for the poet to go forth by the 



Our Lord and Master. 67 

shore and through the woods and over the 
hills, and tell his story in verse, in order 
that men may know the real significance of 
these things and man's relation to them. The 
mission of the poet as a seer of religious 
truth, as a discerner of the real meaning of 
Scripture, as an unfolder of human faith, 
duty, and destiny, has not yet been fully real- 
ized. 

Perhaps it may be sufficient here on this 
point to say that the hymn-books of the Chris- 
tian centuries, taken en masse, may be a bet- 
ter index of the theology of the Church than 
technical works of the theologians. At any 
rate, who can really know the truths of the 
Bible until he has studied them in song? 
Who can understand the New Testament 
until he has read what the poets have done 
in interpreting its characters and picturing 
its incidents? We are warranted, therefore, 
in asking what the great singers have thought 
of Jesus Christ? What have they seen in 
him? What are their teachings concerning 



68 Our Lord and Master. 

his title and place ? Of course, the answer to 
these questions, fully given, would require 
volumes, instead of a few pages. Our treat- 
ment of this phase of the question must be 
brief and suggestive, and must deal with but 
one single section of the vast field opened 
to view; namely, that which contains tributes 
which without any question are directed to 
our Lord as possessing the attributes and 
jurisdiction of Deity. Multitudes of other 
hymns and poems glorifying him as Teacher 
and Friend abound, but they lie just now 
beyond our scope. 

But little material is found to illustrate 
this thesis in the very early Christian cen- 
turies, except the historical testimony, found 
in various places, that the Christians were 
accustomed to praise the Savior in their serv- 
ices as Divine. Caius, a Greek author, writ- 
ing early in the third century, speaks of the 
psalms and odes then in vogue, "written by 
the faithful, hymns to the Christ, the Word 
of God, calling him God." One of these, by 



OUK LOKD AND MASTER. 69 

Clement of Alexandria, who died in A. D. 
220, has been preserved, and translated into 
various tongues, and is still in use. Two 
stanzas from a familiar version may illustrate 
its tone and teaching: 

Shepherd of tender youth, 
Guiding in love and truth 

Through devious ways ; 
Christ, our triumphant King, 
We come thy name to sing, 
Hither our children bring 

To shout thy praise. 

Ever be thou our Guide, 
Our Shepherd and our Pride, 

Our Staff and Song: 
Jesus, thou Christ of God, 
By thy perennial Word 
Lead us where thou has trod, 

Make our faith strong. 

This beautiful hymn may serve to em- 
phasize the testimony of a writer, quoted by 
the Church historian, Eusebius, who declared 
that "the psalms and hymns of the brethren, 
from the earliest days of Christianity which 



70 Our Lord and Master. 

had been written by the faithful, all cele- 
brate Christ, the Word of God, proclaiming 
his Divinity." 

From St. Ambrose, born A. D. 340, came 
scores of blessed hymns, all of them saturated 
with vital Christian truths. From one of 
them — that which is known in the Latin 
tongue by its first line, Splendor Paternce 
gloria, we take a single stanza, which evinces 
the faith which he cherished in the Lord of 
glory : 

Thou brightness of the Father's ray, 
True Light of light, and Day of day, 
Light's fountain and eternal spring, 
Thou Morn the morn illumining ! 
Glide in, thou very Sun divine ; 
With everlasting brightness shine ; 
And shed abroad on every sense 
The Spirit's light and influence. 

There was in use in Spain in the fifth cen- 
tury a collection of vespers, prayers, and 
hymns, known as the Mozarabic Breviary, 
from which we cite a stanza which closes one 



Our Loed and Master. 71 

of its most characteristic chants. As trans- 
lated by Ellerton the lines are as follows: 

Almighty Christ, to thee our voices sing ; 
Glory for evermore to thee we bring 
An endless Hallelujah. 

Perhaps there can not be found a more 
typical instance of the truth which we are 
exemplifying than one that is furnished in a 
hjrmn written by the Venerable Bede, who 
lived A. D. 672-735. It will be remembered 
that his glorious death occured in his mo- 
nastic cell just as he had finished his transla- 
tion of the Gospel of John into Anglo-Saxon. 
Then he uttered the ancient phrase, "Glory be 
unto the Father, and unto the Son, and unto 
the Holy Ghost," and with the last word his 
tongue faltered, his breath failed, and his 
spirit was with God. From his Hymn on 
the Ascension these lines will help us deter- 
mine what his inmost belief was as to the 
jurisdiction and heavenly station of Jesus : 

A hymn of glory let us sing : 
New hymns throughout the world shall 
ring; 



72 Our Lord and Master. 

By a new way none ever trod, 

Christ mounteth to the throne of God. 

May our affections thither tend, 
And thither constantly ascend, 
Where seated on the Father's throne, 
Thee, reigning in the heavens, we own ! 

A single additional citation from mediaeval 
hymnody must suffice. It comes from the 
masterpiece of Latin religious poetry, "Dies 
Irae," written by Thomas of Celano, a saintly 
monk, about A. D. 1250. Its awful majesty 
has won for it a matchless place among the 
poems of mediaeval times. Taken through- 
out, it is a description of the final judgment, 
and a plea for mercy addressed to the Judge. 
Even to those who are not familiar with the 
language in which it is written, the poem 
in the original has a wonderful solemnity, 
grandeur, and moving power. We venture 
to cite one of the Latin stanzas: 

Bex tremendx majestatis, 
Qui salvandos salvas gratis, 
Salva me, fons pietatis! 



OUK LOED AND MASTEK. 73 

From Dean Alford's translation we quote 
the above stanza and two additional ones done 
into English, as suggesting the spirit and 
character of the whole : 

King of awful majesty, 
Saving sinners graciously, 
Fount of mercy, save thou me ! 

Thou just Judge of wrath severe, 
Grant my sins remission here, 
Ere thy reckoning day appear. 

Lord, thine ear in mercy bow, 
Broken is my heart and low : 
Guard of my last end be thou ! 

In that day, that mournful day, 
When to judgment wakes our clay, 
Show me mercy, Lord, I pray ! 

Who can doubt, with these citations before 
him, that this belief in the Deity of our Lord 
had its origin, not in post-apostolic ages, 
foisted in by perverted teachers, by means of 
Church councils and philosophic speculations, 
but in the first preaching of the Gospel by our 
Lord and his immediate followers, and that 



74 Our Lord and Master. 

it has always had the foremost place in the 
hymns, prayers, devotions, creeds, and inner 
life of Christian believers? 

ft 16. Witness of Modern Poets. 

Were we to begin to cite from the treas- 
ures of modern hymnology the songs which 
are in form as well as spirit hymns of praise 
to our Lord, and which are unquestionable 
recognitions of his Divinity, we would not 
know where to stop. Great volumes are 
packed with glorious hymns of this character. 
Poets, even, who are not considered to be fully 
orthodox in this regard, when they sing of 
him utter words of sublimest adoration; as, 
for example, Whittier: 

Lord and Master of us all, 

Whatever our name or sign, 
We own thy sway, we hear thy call, 

We test our lives by thine ! 

Three citations, from hymns but little 
known in our ordinary hymn-books, may serve 



Our Lord and Master. 75 

as types of many hundreds. Take this, for 
instance, from Frances Kidley Havergal : 

In thee all fullness dwelleth, 

All grace and power divine ; 
The glory that excelleth, 

O Son of God, is thine. 
We worship thee, we bless thee, 

To thee, O Christ, we sing ; 
We praise thee and confess thee 

Our holy Lord and King. 

William Morley Punshon is widely known 
because of his eloquent sermons and lectures, 
but his poetry is not often read. Some of 
his religious poems, however, are full of mel- 
ody and fervor. These lines from "A Hymn 
for Sunday Evening" afford another illustra- 
tion of what we have been urging — the pre- 
dominance in modern hymnology of appeals 
and songs directed immediately to Christ as 
to One who hears and answers prayer: 

When sinks the sun behind the hill, 
When all the weary wheels stand still ; 



76 Our Lord and Master. 

When by our bed the loved ones weep, 
And death-dews o'er the forehead creep, 
And vain is help or hope from men ; 
Jesus, our Lord, receive us then! 

Taking still a further specimen, we find 
in it the very essence of the truth we are con- 
sidering. William Pennefather, an English- 
man, is the author of this utterance of prayer 
and praise : 

Jesus, stand among us in thy risen power! 
Let this time of worship be a hallowed hour. 
Breathe the Holy Spirit into every heart : 
Bid the fears and sorrows from each soul depart. 
Thus, with quickened footsteps, we'll pursue the 

way, 
Watching for the dawning of th' Eternal Day ! 

F. W. Faber shall be our last witness from 
the world of hymnology. We cite from his 
hymn beginning "Jesus is God," the closing 
stanza, which is a didactic setting forth of 
the doctrine in question: 

Jesus is God ! let sorrow come, 

And pain, and every ill ; 
All are worth while, for all are means 

His glory to fulfill ; 



OUE LOKD AND MASTER. 77 

Worth while a thousand years of life, 

To speak one little word, 
If only by our faith we own 

The Godhead of our Lord ! 

Had we space to cite from some of the lead- 
ing poets, aside from those who have written 
hymns, it would not be difficult to show their 
view of Jesus Christ. Tennyson, for instance, 
opens his greatest poem with the apostrophe : 

Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 

Believing where we can not prove ; — 

Thou seemest human and Divine, 
The highest, holiest manhood, thou ; 
Our wills are ours, we know not how ; 

Our wills are ours, to make them thine. 

Our little systems have their day ; 

They have their day and cease to be ; 

They are but broken lights of thee. 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 

By the side of this citation "could be placed 
many scores of passages replete with the un- 



78 Our Lord and Master. 

questioning Christian faith of the poet. Who 
that studies his writings can doubt the sin- 
cerity and the depth of his attachment to 
the Master and the Word ? And who has any 
doubt what Vision it was which inspired his 
soul at the last when, almost with expiring 
breath, he sang his swan-song, "Crossing the 
Bar," closing with the lines : 

" I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
When I have crossed the bar." 

Browning, too, is another witness to the 
Divine Christ. No student of his works can 
ignore the spiritual elements in them, his 
positive and constructive and far-reaching 
faith. As W. J. Dawson, in his "Quest and 
Vision," remarks, "It is not too much to say 
that the greatness of Eobert Browning as a 
poet is in no small measure due to his great- 
ness as a believer." In his "Death in the 
Desert" these lines are as strenuous and ample 
in their orthodox convictions as any to be 
found in the creeds of Christendom : 



Our Loed and Master. 79 

I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it. 

If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of men 
Mere man, the first and best, but nothing more, 
Account him, for reward of what he was, 
Now and forever, wretchedest of all. 

Call Christ, then, the illimitable God, 
Or lost ! 

In these profound words the poet has 
packed the gist of a great Christological dis- 
cussion now going on in the world. The di- 
lemma thus suggested every agnostic, every 
denier of the real Divinity of Christ, must 
face. If Jesus Christ, with his declaration 
of his own faultlessness, with his boundless 
assumptions, his claims on the heart and life 
of all men and of all ages, was not "God 
manifest in the flesh" — then what and who 
was he? That question demands a satisfac- 
tory answer from the lips of those who pro- 
fess to honor him as the greatest of teachers 



80 Our Lord and Master. 

and the best of human kind. Could he be 
what they claim, and nothing more ? We have 
cited generously from the hymn-writers and 
poets to show their answer to such an in- 
quiry. Their vision and voice declare him to 
be Divine! 

U 17. The Witness of the Prayer-Book. 

A glance at the Book of Common Prayer, 
or any modification of it as used in Churches 
which maintain some sort of a ritualistic 
service, will serve to emphasize still further 
the truth which we have been unfolding. 
While the most of the prayers therein found 
are directed in form to Almighty God, or 
to God as our Father, yet in all cases they 
are offered "through Jesus Christ our Lord;" 
while again and again, in the Litany and 
elsewhere, supplications are offered directly 
to the Eedeemer. In the Te J) turn laud- 
amus, for instance, these words are used: 

" Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. . . . Thou 
sittest at the right hand of God in the glory of the 
Father. We believe that thou shalt come to be our 



Our Lord and Master. 81 

Judge. We therefore pray thee, help thy servants whom 
thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood. Make 
them to be numbered with thy saints in glory everlast- 
ing. O Lord, save thy people and bless thy heritage." 

In the solemn strains of the Gloria in ex- 
celsis this pleading occurs: 

"O Lord, the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ; O 
Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest 
away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us." 

In the Litany, believers are taught to 
pray: 

" O God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy 
upon us miserable sinners. . . . By the mystery of 
thy holy Incarnation ; by thy holy Nativity and Cir- 
cumcision; by thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation; 
by thine Agony and bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and 
Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy 
glorious Resurrection and Ascension, and by the Com- 
ing of the Holy Ghost, Good Lord, deliver us." 

The set prayer for the Increase of the 
Ministry is thus phrased: 

" O Lord Jesus Christ, who didst command thy dis- 
ciples to pray the Lord of the harvest that he would 
send forth laborers into his harvest; we beseech thee 
graciously to increase the number of faithful ministers 
of thy Word and Sacraments, and to send them forth 
among all nations of men; that perishing souls may be 
saved, and the bounds of thy blessed kingdom be en- 
larged." 

6 



82 Our Lord and Master. 

We have not room for all the Collects 
which are addressed directly to Christ as 
the Hearer of prayer. This one, assigned 
for use on Monday in Whitsun Week, may 
be taken as an apt instance — one out of 
many: 

"O Lord Jesus Christ, who didst send from the Father 
the Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth ; grant that he 
may enlighten our minds with the teaching of thy 
truth, and sanctify our hearts with the power of thy 
grace, so that evermore abiding in thee we may be 
found steadfast in faith and holy in life, being con- 
formed unto thine image, who art with the Father and 
the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. 
Amen." 

It needs to be kept in mind that many 
of these utterances from the English Prayer- 
book are centuries old; that they antedate 
our English speech, and appear in the oldest 
versions as translations from the Greek and 
the Latin tongues, in which ascriptions of 
praise and worship by the ancient Church 
in many lands were offered to the ascended 
Christ. When we repeat these prayers and 
collects, therefore, to-day, we are in touch 



Our Lord and Master. 83 

with apostles, martyrs, and witnesses of 
other times and lands who adored and wor- 
shiped our Savior. The example of the 
Church in all ages is thus to be cited in 
support of this belief and habit. 

fl 18. The Facts Focused. 

While this phase of the doctrine of the Di- 
vinity of the Lord is familiar to theologians, 
yet, doubtless, there are many who have simply 
taken it for granted, and have never come 
to realize how complete the demonstration 
is made when all the facts and teaching of 
the Word are brought to a focus in the case. 
With these data in view, no one can doubt 
that immediately after he left the earth 
men began to worship him as divine. The 
dying Stephen, the Apostle Paul, the Apostle 
John, and those whom they instructed, 
seem to have had no question as to the 
proper rank which the Savior occupied in 
heaven, or the share of reverence and homage 
which was due to him on earth. From the 



84 Ouk Lord and Master. 

time of the apostles till this day of grace 
in which we live he has been unceasingly 
adored by an increasing number of believers. 
Those who, while accepting the Lord Jesus 
as a Guide and Teacher, have yet refused to 
honor him as in any proper sense Divine, have 
always made up an inconsiderable proportion 
of the Christian brotherhood. Only a few, 
comparatively, among all those who have 
accepted the Bible as containing a revela- 
tion of God's grace to the world, have ever 
doubted the Divinity of the Savior, who was 
followed to the skies by growing acclamations 
of praise and homage and worship. 

Moreover, no forms of Christian belief 
have amounted to much except those phases 
which have been built upon the fundamental 
doctrine of his Divinity. Divided as the de- 
nominations are in some respects, separated 
far apart as are the Protestant from the 
Eoman Catholic and the Greek Churches, 
this central and essential truth, among others, 
they hold in common, that the Lord Jesus 



Oue Lord and Master. 85 

Christ was not only "truly man/' but that 
he was also "truly God," and that as God 
he is entitled to the worship, service, loyalty, 
and honor that are due from man to God. 
All these Churches, whatever may divide 
them asunder, are one when they look to- 
wards the Sun of righteousness, the Lamb 
of God, who taketh away the sin of the 
world; and all of them may aptly join in 
singing Isaac Watts's wonderful hymn: 

"Jesus is worthy to receive 

Honor and power Divine ; 
And blessings more than we can give 

Be, Lord, forever thine ! 

The whole creation join in one 

To bless the sacred name 
Of him who sits upon the throne, 

And to adore the Lamb." 

fl 19. The Testimony of Experience. 

As we hinted in the preface, there are 
invincible proofs of the divine care, love, 
and power of Jesus Christ which are put 
within the reach of those who trust him. 



86 Our Lord and Master. 

Countless myriads have, since the days of 
St. Paul, been able to accord with his testi- 
mony, and declare — some of them in the 
face of martyr fires and other forms of tor- 
ture inflicted upon them because of their 
fealty to their Kedeemer, — "I know whom 
I have believed, and I am persuaded that 
he is able to keep that which I have com- 
mitted to him against that day." Such wit- 
nesses are found to-day in every land under 
the skies. They know by personal experi- 
ence the resources, the tenderness, the au- 
thority, the love, the mercy, and the omnip- 
otent power of Jesus. Substantially their 
creed is a very simple one — about what that 
of the Eoman centurion of Capernaum was: 
"I believe in the almighty power of Jesus 
of Nazareth!" They have poured into his 
listening ear their confession of sin; they 
have found, at his feet, guidance in per- 
plexity and light in time of impenetrable 
darkness; they have gone to him with the 
daily story of their weakness, their trials, 



Our Lord and Master. 87 

their perils, their temptations; and they 
have been made conscious of his presence, 
his help, his sympathy, and his care. 

Their knowledge of him as a present, Di- 
vine Savior, with whom they hold daily fel- 
lowship, is inwrought into their very life; 
it has become a part of their souls. They 
know him by a direct act of cognition, and 
by virtue of a life of communion which has 
stood the test of all the vicissitudes, dangers, 
temptations, and sorrows through which 
they have come. Whatever else they may 
doubt, of this one truth they have no ques- 
tion, — Jesus Christ is an Almighty Savior. 
The declaration of the mountaineer, "I know 
that Jesus Christ is Divine, because he for- 
gave my sins; he saved my soul!" was not 
only good theology, but good logic. 

This Man is the Creator of the new 
moral life which throbs through the modern 
world; he is the Maker of saints, ancient 
and modern, on earth and in heaven. Liv- 
ing witnesses by the million can be found 



88 Our Lord and Master. 

to testify that he found them in their sins — 
perhaps living in gross and brutal wicked- 
ness or steeped in the savageries of heathen 
lands; that he forgave them, revealed to 
them a new life of peace and joy and hope; 
that he cleansed and renewed them, and 
built them up into sainthood. Myriads can 
testify after this fashion: "In ocean storms 
and on the field of battle ; in tropical jungles, 
with wild beasts on every side; face to face 
with mobs; in the midst of cannibals; when 
carrying burdens of responsibility and toil 
and care which seemed intolerable; when 
heartbroken with bereavement; when strug- 
gling with secret sins and with temptations 
which took hold on the very foundations 
of our life, and in manifold other vicissi- 
tudes and adventures we have called on the 
Lord Jesus in prayer for help. While we 
prayed, we found a strange and blessed calm 
administered to our quaking hearts. We 
have realized his presence as surely as though 
he had appeared visibly to our eyes. Hia 



Our Lord and Master. 89 

responses to our cries, his anointing touch, 
his immediate help, his gracious deliverances 
wrought in our behalf, and, more than all, 
the constant supply of grace and peace which 
he has administered to us in our daily 
needs, have made him the most real and 
blessed of friends and comforters. What- 
ever may be the limitations of our vision and 
our knowledge, this one thing we know: 
Jesus Christ is a Friend who sticketh closer 
than a brother; he is a Counselor of the 
ignorant and a Helper of the dependent 
and the needy. We have trusted him and 
have not been confounded." 

These testimonies come from all quarters, 
all lands, all classes. From the store and 
the farm, the office and the shop, the street 
and the home, the prison and the palace, 
from kings and from peasants, from cabinet 
officers and from workers in mines, issues 
the stream of testimony, bearing its tribute 
to the existence, the care, the blessed power of 
the Master. Those who have submitted their 



90 Our Lord and Master. 

lives to the authority of Christ, who have 
trusted in him, who have given their serv- 
ices, their adoring love, their deepest loy- 
alty, their highest homage to him, year after 
year, and are able to testify that they have 
found his grace sufficient to their utmost 
needs, are literally representative of all sorts 
and conditions of men. Typically, there- 
fore, it is the whole human race which cries 
out in view of the divine character and 
jurisdiction of Jesus Christ, the Lord from 
heaven, our Eedeemer and King — 

" Worship, honor, power and blessing 

Thou art worthy to receive ; 
Loudest praises, without ceasing, 

Meet it is for us to give ! 
Help, ye bright angelic spirits, 

Bring your sweetest, noblest lays ; 
Help to sing our Savior's merits, 

Help to chant ImmanuePs praise !" 

If, then, the apostles taught the Divinity 
of Jesus Christ; and if the vast majority of 
Christians who have lived in the world since 



Ouk Lokd and Master. 91 

their day have, without any hesitation or 
question, accepted from the heart that truth 
as a fundamental part of Christian doc- 
trine, who can reasonably reject it? The 
theory that all these teachers and believers, 
beginning with those who knew him when 
on the earth, and reaching through the ages 
down to our time, could have been mistaken; 
that the Greek Church, the Eoman Catholic 
Church, the Protestant Churches — almost 
the whole body of believers, ancient, medi- 
aeval, and modern — could have misconceived, 
misconstrued, and misrepresented the char- 
acter and authority of the Savior, worshiping 
him without warrant, putting him in their 
thoughts and by their teaching where he had 
no right to be, — namely, on the throne of the 
universe, — who can rationally support such a 
preposterous supposition? 

If 20. Conclusion - . 

A single further suggestion must here 
suffice: There is no discrepancy between the 



92 Ouk Lord and Master. 

doctrine of the Unity of God, and the 
Divinity of Christ. We are not taught that 
there are two or three objects of worship; 
there are not three Divine Beings set forth 
as worthy of adoration — "The Lord our God 
is one Lord." We are not bound here to 
formulate a doctrine of the Trinity which 
will correlate the truths which we have been 
studying and make them logically and theo- 
logically one. That task we leave for the 
theological seminary and for teachers of 
Divinity. It will suit our aim for the time 
if we agree upon this brief statement of 
the truth in the case: We worship only one 
God; he has revealed himself as our Father, 
yearning over us, providing for us, protect- 
ing us with Fatherly care and love; he has 
revealed his power, grace, wisdom, and for- 
giving and renewing mercy in the life, the 
ministry, the character and the divine- 
human Person of Jesus Christ, His only 
Son, our Lord; and also in the ministrations 



Our Lord and Master. 93 

of his Holy Spirit, the Comforter, so fully, 
absolutely, and clearly, that in all these 
revelations, manifestations, relations, and un- 
foldings of himself to man, he is to be adored 
and worshiped. It is not incumbent upon us 
to solve, or even to formulate our notions 
of, the mystery of these relations. It may 
suffice for us to realize that we may sing: 

Father ! beneath thy sheltering wing 

In sweet security we rest, 
And fear no evil earth can bring; 

In life, in death, supremely blest. 

And while we worship God as our Father, 
we do not deprive him of any glory when 
from the depths of our souls we also sing: 

Hosanna to the living Lord ! 
Hosanna to the incarnate Word ! 
To Christ, Creator, Savior, King, 
Let earth, let heaven, Hosanna sing ! 

And at the same time we are not doing 
despite to Him who is great and greatly 



94 Our Lord and Master. 

to be praised, and whose "greatness is un- 
searchable/' when in the same breath we cry 
out in adoration and prayer: 

Holy Ghost, with light divine, 
Shine upon this heart of mine ; 
Chase the shades of night away, 
Turn my darkness into day ! 

Thus, as Christian hymnology has so 
abundantly shown in every century, we may 
not only offer homage to God as our Father, 
directly, but we may also sing with heart 
and voice: 

Jesus, thou everlasting King, 
Accept the tribute which we bring ; 
Accept thy well-deserved renown, 
And wear our praises as thy crown. 

fl 21. Appendix. 

For many readers the following supple- 
mentary matter, setting forth various forms 
of the orthodox doctrine of the Divinity of 
our Lord, may be deemed helpful and sug- 
gestive, as evidencing the doctrinal mold into 



Our Lord and Master. 95 

which the truth under consideration fixed 
itself from ancient times : 

1. The Apostles' Ckeed. 

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of 
heaven and earth: 

And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord; who 
was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin 
Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, 
dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third 
day he rose from the dead ; he ascended into heaven, 
and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Al- 
mighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick 
and the dead. 

I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic 
Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of 
sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlast- 
ing. Amen. 

2. The Nicene Creed. 

The first Ecumenical Council of the 
Church, held at Mcaea, in Bithynia, Asia 
Minor, in the year 325 A. D., formed the first 
great organized expression of Christian be- 
lief as to the central truths of Christianity. 
Particular attention was paid to the doctrine 
of the Divinity of the Savior, and the dis- 
cussions took a wide range; but the unified 



96 Otjk Lord and Master. 

judgment of nearly all the members of the 
Council found record at last in what became 
known as the Mcene Creed. This Creed, with 
some additions to the last article, made in 
A. D. 381 by the Council of Constantinople, 
and slightly modified for use by the Western 
Church, ran substantially as follows, omitting 
the anathemas which in that far-off age were 
denounced against those who rejected the 
orthodox faith : 

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker 
of heaven and earth, and of all things, visible and in- 
visible : 

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son 
of God, Begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of 
God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, 
not made, Being of one substance with the Father; by 
Whom all things were made ; Who for us men and for 
our salvation came down from heaven, and was in- 
carnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was 
made Man, and was crucified for us under Pontius 
Pilate ; He suffered and was buried, and the third day 
He rose again according to the Scriptures, and as- 
cended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of 
the Father; from thence He shall come to judge the 
quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. 

I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of 
life; who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who 



Our Lord and Master. 97 

with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified; 
who spake by the prophets : 

And 1 believe in one Catholic and Apostolic Church: 
I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins; 
And I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life 
of the world to come. Amen. 

3. The First and Second Articles op Keligion. 

The Thirty-nine Articles of Keligion of the 
Anglican Church were adopted by that body 
in 1571. With some modification adapting 
certain Articles to the use of believers in this 
country, the Articles were adopted by the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in 1801. From 
these Thirty-nine Articles John Wesley se- 
lected twenty-four for use by his Methodist 
Societies in 1784, when they were about to 
organize themselves into the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church. That body added, in 1804, an 
additional Article, and these twenty-five Ar- 
ticles constitute a part of the doctrinal basis 
of that denomination. The Articles which 
bear upon the theme discussed in the present 
volume are as follows, cited from the original 
7 



98 Oue Lord and Master. 

form in the Prayer-book of the Church of 
England : 

Article I. Of Faith in the Holy Trinity. 

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, 
without body, parts or passions ; of infinite power, wis- 
dom, and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all 
things, both visible and invisible. And in the unity of 
this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, 
power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost. 

Article II. Of the Word or Son of God, which was 
made very Man, 

The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten 
from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal 
God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man's 
nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her sub- 
stance; so that two whole and perfect natures, that is 
to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together 
in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one 
Christ, very God and very Man; who truly suffered, 
was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile his Father 
to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, 
but also for the actual sins of men. 

Mr. Wesley, in the version of the Articles 
which he prepared for use by his followers in 
this country, edited and modified certain of 
them. For instance, from the First Article, as 
cited above in its original form, he omitted 
the words "or passions," and also the term 



Our Lord and Master. 99 

"both" preceding the expression "visible and 
invisible." He used the word "are" instead of 
the archaic form "be" in the second sentence. 
From the Second Article he omitted the ex- 
pression "begotten from everlasting of the 
Father," thus at one stroke eliminating from 
the doctrinal basis of American Methodism 
one of the most useless and vexatious of 
theological controversies, that pertaining to 
what theologians have called "the eternal 
Generation of the Son." The words "of her 
substance" were also left out, and the third 
word of the Article, "which," properly be- 
came "who" in his rendering. 

LotC. 



1903 



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